Film review by Kevin Patterson
Raising Arizona * * * 1/2 (out of four) PG-13, 1987 Directed by Joel Coen. Written by Joel and Ethan Coen. Starring Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter.
"My name is H.I. McDonough. You can call me Hi," drawls Nicolas Cage, and with that, Joel and Ethan Coen's "Raising Arizona" is off and running with the deranged inspiration of a tall tale. Hi, a dimwitted but surprisingly eloquent convenience store thief, is the perfect narrator for this tale of love and kidnapping, rural Arizona-style, delivering his "observations" with all the weight of a Shakespearean monologue. After several rounds in the slammer, Hi finally marries his true love, a police officer and prison photographer named Ed (Holly Hunter) for whom he has been carryinga torch ever since she first took his mug shots - "the day I'll never forget," as he fondly remembers it.
Unfortunately, they soon discover that Ed is infertile, and their inability to have children puts the strains on their marriage ("I even found myself driving past convenience stores . . . that weren't on the way home," Hi reflects somberly). The adoption agencies aren't too impressed with Hi's criminal past, so the two come up with a unique solution. A wealthy family has recently had quintuplets, so they'll just steal one of theirs - after all, four ought to be enough for them, right? After Hi somehow manages to make away with one of them despite starting what is probably the best approximation of a riot that two-week-olds can manage, the movie follows Hi and Ed as they try to care for their new addition to the family.
More grins ensue, mostly deriving from the banter between Cage and Hunter and from the performances of John Goodman and William Forsythe as two hilariously inept escaped criminals. And the Coens' talent for visual comedy makes for some of the movie's best moments; an extended romp through the desert towards the end of the movie is good for quite a few laughs as Goodman and Forsythe manage to pull one ridiculously dumb stunt after another. There is also a chase scene in the middle which seems to come straight out of a Road Runner cartoon and has to be one of the funniest pieces of slapstick in movie history. It's nearly impossible to describe verbally, but let me just say that it starts with what seems like a typical convenience store robbery, but by the end, a trigger-happy policeman is running through a drugstore trying to dodge carts steered by screaming women who are being pursued by a pack of house dogs.
The only thing that seems a little uneven about "Raising Arizona" is its handling of the bizarre "Lone Rider of the Apocalypse" character. This hefty, gun-slinging biker, who seems to have wandered in from a Mad Max movie, appears at first mostly in Hi's dreams or in his imagination, but towards the end he seems to be a real person. While some of the other goings-on are pretty outlandish, it is not until the biker is revealed to be a physical reality that "Raising Arizona" clearly crosses the line into fantasy, and at an hour and fifteen minutes into the film, it's a little late. The biker's scenes are certainly amusing - it wasn't until after the movie was over, when I had finally stopped laughing, that I got to thinking about this in the first place - but it also didn't take me too long to figure out that the character was handled rather strangely.
Psychotic bikers and metaphysical distortions aside, however, "Raising Arizona" is definitely one of the funnier and better-written comedies that I have come across, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys clever, tongue-in-cheek verbal humor and off-the-wall slapstick.
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